Three House members and five senators from the United States have demanded that wagering on the 2024 presidential election be outlawed.
Prominent individuals including Senators Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Representatives Jamie Raskin and John Sarbanes, are members of the bipartisan group.
The lawmakers warned Rostin Behnam, Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), about the dangerous impact that these betting markets could have on the electoral landscape in a recent letter.
Betting Platforms Could Swaty Election Outcomes
The group voiced worries about the potential for billionaires to use big bets to influence election results and undermine public confidence in the democratic process.
The lawmakers emphasized that the integrity of the electoral process would be seriously jeopardized if elections were to be viewed as merely profitable endeavors.
“Political bets change the motivations behind each vote, replacing political convictions with financial calculations.”
They contended that the fundamental foundation of democracy would be compromised by allowing the commercialization of American elections.
Last year, @RepRaskin & I warned betting on elections could undermine trust in our democratic institutions & further incentivize dark money in politics. Today, I joined my colleagues in support of @CFTC's proposed rule to ban betting on election outcomes. https://t.co/fygd9kLecS
— Rep. John Sarbanes (@RepSarbanes) August 5, 2024
In addition, the delegates highlighted the concerning data originating from websites such as Polymarket, where millions of dollars have been bet on different election-related markets.
The platform’s past of breaking the law, which includes a hefty fine levied by the CFTC in January 2022, emphasizes how urgent it is to address these problems.
There are three months left until the US presidential election.
Polymarket Sees Surge in Trading Volume
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform that was introduced in 2020. It allows users to wager with cryptocurrency on the results of actual events.
Bettors wager on a variety of events, including the outcome of the November 2024 US presidential election.
Users of the platform, which makes use of the USDC stablecoin, can purchase and sell shares in predictions pertaining to the probability of future events.
Furthermore, Polymarket provides cryptocurrency betting opportunities, allowing users to forecast the future values of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Record-breaking trading volumes have recently been achieved by Polymarket.
With $343 million in trading volume in July alone, the platform achieved a milestone of $1 billion in monthly trading volume, reflecting the growing interest in the US election.
This represents a notable increase of more than 440% from the $63 million in May 2024 and more than 200% from the $111 million in June.
Even with these high trading volumes, Polymarket has had trouble making enough money.
Through two funding rounds, including a $45 million Series B round in which Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin participated, the platform has successfully raised $70 million.
Furthermore, on July 24, Polymarket partnered with payments platform MoonPay to enable debit and credit card payments in an effort to expedite the onboarding process, particularly for non-crypto users.
Yuga Cohler, an engineering lead at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, stated in a recent post on X that “prediction markets are the purest technological manifestation of liberal democracy.”
“They take free markets and free speech as inputs and output truth. In an age when centralized control of information is a systemic risk, prediction markets offer a way of cutting through misleading narratives and viewing the unvarnished truth.”